Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 was enacted on 8 April 2010, and simplifies and strengthens existing equalities law, although equal pay provisions remain largely unchanged.

The UK Government is currently considering the timeline for which each element of the Act should be commenced. At the moment, the Government Equalities Office anticipates that the core provisions will come into force in October 2010.

In July 2010, Melanie Field, Head of Discrimination Law, GEO indicated that the coalition Government was "still to decide" on the introduction of three provisions: the socioeconomic duty, power to require private sector details to be published on gender pay gap, and "another workplace provision".

Equal pay and the Equality Act

Although the provisions in the Equality Act mirror those within the Equal Pay Act, there are some changes of note.

• The Act includes a new term which suggests that pay protection schemes are capable of being lawful. Sub-section 69(3) of the Act states that the long-term aim of reducing inequality between men’s and women’s pay is always to be regarded as a legitimate aim for the purposes of justifying pay practices that indirectly discriminate against women. Therefore, short-term pay protection schemes introduced with the aim of removing long-term inequalities in pay may be capable of being objectively justified, provided that their use is a proportionate way of achieving that aim.
• Pay secrecy clauses, despite claims to the contrary in the press, are not banned outright. Instead they will be 'unenforceable' if an employee has made a 'relevant' pay disclosure for the purposes of identifying a relationship between having (or not having) a protected characteristic, and pay.
• The Act provides for secondary legislation in 2013 to require companies in the private sector, with more than 250 employees, to provide information on their pay gap and the reasons for it.
  

Single Equality Duty

The Equality Act will establish a single equality duty in England and Wales. This will cover all six equality strands: gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and belief, age, disability, and race.

Enacting the single duty falls within the competence of the Scottish Parliament, and Scotland will have its own single equality duty. This may vary from that in England in Wales, as the current gender equality duty does. Scottish Ministers have responsibility for determining the specific duties that will enable public sector bodies to reduce discrimination and harassment, and to promote equality.

The Scottish Government has consulted on the single duty. It was intended that the new duty should commence in Scotland in April 2011, but this timescale is contingent on the activation of the duty in England and Wales.